1. Summary of the chapter
1. Summary of the Chapter “Designing and Conducting Interviews and Questionnaires” written by Krug and Sell
Krug and Sell’s chapter “Designing and conducting interviews and questionnaires”, published in Research Methods in Language Variation and Change (ed. Krug & Schlüter 2013), deals with the description of questionnaires and interviews as methods used in linguistic research for eliciting data. For this purpose, the chapter is divided into two main parts.
The first one provides a theoretical base explaining methods of data collection, different types of interviews, external variables, measurements, choice of speakers and problems which can occur when using this linguistic approach. The authors explain the steps which need to be taken to gain reliable data and a significant and informative result. Firstly, before actually eliciting data, “formulating the research question [...] serves as an important guideline both in designing and analysing the data” (Krug & Sell 69: 2013). Questionnaires and interviews are scientific methods used in sociolinguistic research. Thus, social factors such as gender, age or occupation have to be taken into consideration prior to carrying out the survey, as well. While collecting data, it is important to provide surrounding conditions which match the specific requirements of the linguistic study. After eliciting data, a careful analysis of the figures is crucial for obtaining a reliable result (cf. Krug & Sell 2013: 69f).
Krug and Sell continue with describing the differences between interviews and surveys with regard to their structure and the interaction between informant and researcher (cf. 2013: 71ff). The external variables are characterised in the following sub-chapter. They need to be considered as they have an influence on the informant’s speech. Thus, important factors which have to be examined are: time, age, ethnolect, idiolect, register, accent and the social class (cf. 2013: 74 ff).
Sociolinguistic studies aim to explore the impact of the society, i.e. social factors, on the speech of people in a certain area. However, exactly this relation between society and language can cause the so called social desirability effect of which the researcher needs to be aware. This effect can be defined as a “norm-consistent behaviour that is deviant from spontaneous language production [...]” (Krug & Sell 2013: 75). Further problems of questionnaires and interviews can include misunderstanding of questions, the influence of common knowledge on the informant’s decisions, as well as the use of normative expressions (cf. 2013: 76). Additionally, Krug and Sell present different ways of measurements of questionnaire items. Therefore, the distinction between nominal, ordinal and interval scales is explained. Furthermore, the authors describe two different ways of scaling the answers of a questionnaire. It is important to decide whether an even or odd number of options for answering is allowed as a midpoint would enable the informant to rate the respective question neutrally. Finally, the choice of speakers has to be taken into account when eliciting linguistic data from questionnaires and interviews because it obviously has an effect on the outcome of the research. Generally, linguists and “speakers with official status” (Krug & Sell 2013: 78) should be avoided as they will not display the actual language spoken in a certain area.
The second main part of the chapter, on the other hand, illustrates the practical application of this method by presenting “The Bamberg questionnaire project on lexical and morpho-syntactic variation in English”. This project “investigates varieties of English around the world” (Krug & Sell 2013: 79) by collecting linguistic data from university and secondary school students in Malta, Gibraltar, Puerto Rico and the Channel Islands. It aims to locate the English spoken on those islands within the continuum of British English and American English. The conducted questionnaire consists of four parts: the informant sheet, an auditory part, a lexical part and a written part (cf. 2013: 80f). The following part of the chapter presents the interpretation of the questionnaire-based studies of Maltese English. Therefore, 180 Maltese informants were asked to fill in the questionnaire. The informants had to decide if the given sentences are acceptable for either spoken or written language in Malta. Thus, the researchers tried to detect whether the particular structure used in the sentences is more colloquial or formal. Various tables and bar charts displaying the median, mean and standard deviation of answers are presented to clearly visualize the outcomes of this study. Additionally, an analysis and interpretation of the data is provided which proves that specific structures, which are rather untypical of British or American English, are used in Maltese English. Eventually, explanations for the existence of the differences are suggested (cf. Krug & Sell 2013: 84ff).
Finally, the authors reflect on the limitations and caveats of questionnaires and interviews. Concluding this chapter, Krug and Sell provide a handy list of pros and cons which summarise the advantages and disadvantages of this linguistic research method. (cf. Krug & Sell 2013: 90f).
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